Exodus 33:12-23
12Moses said to the LORD, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’13Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”14He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”15And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”17The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”18Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”19And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.20But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”21And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock;22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Matthew 22:15-22
15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?19Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”21They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
Our calendars say “October 16th” today, but according to the text this morning, it is April 15. Tax Time. And the question posed to Jesus is, is it lawful to pay taxes to the government, or not?
In many ways, this question makes no sense to us. Of course we pay taxes. We pay taxes on everything- gas, clothes, cigarettes, our income. The only two sure things in life are death and taxes. But to the people in 1st century Palestine, this is a loaded question. The Pharisees and Herodians are trying to trick Jesus.
And they start with flattery- “We know that you are sincere. We know that you teach the way of God, and that you show no partiality”- and they use an idiom which means, literally, “you do not look at other’s faces”. Which is ironic, because Jesus’ answer is all about faces, and icons, and images.
But first comes the “Gotcha” question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, to Caesar?” The Jewish people have been taxed by the Romans—in fact, Jesus’ own story began with a tax. Mary and Joseph must travel to Bethlehem, for the census, that all the world should be counted—which was Rome’s way of ensuring an accurate tax roll. Back to the present of the story, the Pharisees and the Herodians think they have him- if Jesus answers “Pay the tax”, then he is colluding with the Roman occupiers, and will lose the support of the common people. If he says “don’t pay the tax” then he is a revolutionary- and a traitor.
Jesus answers their challenge with a question and a challenge of his own: “show me the money”. Actually, he says “show me the coin.” Now coins of the Roam Empire had the image, the icon, of Caesar on them. At this time, archeologists remind us, it would have been "Tiberias Caesar, son of the divine Augustus and our high priest." The coin would have had on the other side an image of the imperial mother, Livia, as the goddess of peace.
And Jesus’ point is this: faithful Jews were to follow the 10 commandments- and the first two are: 1) You shall have no other gods before me, and 2) “You shall make for yourself no graven images”- But the coin of the realm violated both. They featured another god, namely Caesar, and his cast image on the face of the coin.
Which begs the question: what are faithful Jews doing with one of those coins in their pockets? God has forbidden false images and idols. Here are religious leaders, within a stone’s throw of the Holy of Holies, with miniature blasphemies in their change purses. Whether they know it or not, Jesus has just nailed them for hypocrisy. By identifying Caesar’s face on the coin, they have revealed their own inconsistencies. Jesus has just caught them in hypocrisy. Gotcha back!
But this story isn’t a “Jesus is really clever and gets the best of his opponents” story. This story is about whose we are, and who we are, to whom our allegiance is due, and in whose image we are made.
Many of us have heard the moral of the story, the tag line, like this: “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s”.
Which would be easy, and great, if our lives were neatly divided into God areas and not-God areas, two separate columns in the book of life. And some faith traditions have made distinctions between spiritual kingdoms and authority, and temporal kingdoms and authority. But we understand that God is Lord of all our life—not just a portion of it, not just part of it, not just Sunday morning, but all of it.
“The earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof,” Psalm 24 says, “the world and they that dwell therein”. That’s us- all of us, all of our life. Despite what we might think, given how much of us our jobs and the banks and the credit card companies own, we are the Lord’s. Our baptism was the sign and seal of that—that God claimed us.
Which is comforting—but doesn’t make Jesus’ challenge any easier. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s- well, that looks like all of it, doesn’t it? Does that mean we don’t have to pay taxes?
Do you remember the story of Jonah we acted out a few weeks ago? In that story, the people of Ninevah even had their animals repent, put on sack cloth and ashes- because all of life, all of their belongings, all of everything was involved in repenting and turning to God.
Jesus challenge to us is to see that everything—everything—belongs to God, is under the authority of God. God’s claim on a person has no limits—it embraces all areas of life. In First Peter, the author writes advice to the church: “Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor”. (1 Peter 2:17) Which sounds like the emperor is held in high esteem- certainly a prescription for paying taxes. But when we look carefully, we see that the emperor is held in the same esteem as everyone else. We are to love the family of believers, the church. And we are to fear God.
Moses feared God, although not in a cowering way. And not in a highly anxious, worrying about what kind of God this God is way. Moses feared God, revered God—and yet was able to go toe-to-toe with God, to argue with God on behalf of the people. Moses had a sense of awe that made him brave. Because Moses knew what kind of God, God is. Not a god like Caesar, capricious and vain and scary, but a God who says “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy”…and that is us. We who are made in the image of God, as Genesis says.
So we have Caesar’s face on the coin, and we have the living God, in whose image we are made. A cold metal face on a coin, or the presence of the living God. Which will you choose? To whom do we belong, to whom do we give our allegiance?
I want us to try something this week. When you go home, I want you to look around at your life. The tv? The car? The cat? Your children? But I also want us to wrestle with what Jesus meant when he said “Render unto Caesar…and render unto God.” Because, to be honest, we live in both kingdoms. We pay taxes in the kingdom of Caesar, and we talk about, we pray about, we live in the kingdom of heaven. We are not, I don’t think, going to stop paying taxes any time soon. Some people talk about the church “being in the world but not of the world.” How does our faith shape our daily decisions, including our economic ones? How do we negotiate living out this life of faith, given the economic reality we are in, we who are the 99% the occupiers of Wall Street have been cheering about?
So, as the church, I want us to struggle, together, about what it means to give our whole lives to God. What it means to be made in the image of God—and how that shapes our behavior, our talk, our spending—the whole shebang—all of it, all of life. We can work on discerning, together, how to live before the God in whose image we are made.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Exodus 32:1-14 p 69
32When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”2Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”3So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.4He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”6They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
7The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;8they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!<9The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.10Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”11But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?12Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“14And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Matthew 22:1-14 p 803
22Once more Jesus spoke to the scribes and the pharisees in parables, saying:2“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.3He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.4Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’5But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,6while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.7The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.8Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.9Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’10Those slaves went out to the borders of the kingdom and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.11“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,12and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And the man was speechless.13Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’14For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Perhaps you have received them: those “save the date” cards, sent months ahead of the actual wedding, so that you can mark your calendar, and make sure you reserve that day for the big wedding. But imagine that you received a save the date card for a royal wedding- perhaps the wedding this past summer of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Imagine your excitement at being invited! Imagine what the reception would be like: the fanciest foods, an open bar, perhaps a champagne fountain and a dessert table- and now imagine, after the food has been bought and carefully prepared, the catering hall reserved, the musicians hired, that you just decided to bag it. Stay home—and not even have a good excuse. “Why didn’t you come? I invited you especially?” the host asks- “oh, no reason really. Just didn’t feel like it”.
The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet—where the guests don’t bother to show up. In Middle Eastern tradition, the event would have been planned, and the guests invited. And as the day drew near, the host, having counted the number of people attending, would slaughter the animals and prepare the festive meal—and look at the menu: oxen and fat calves— think prime rib and lobster, 7 course meals- lavish extravagance! And once the meal was ready, or close to being served, the servants would go house to house and summon the guests to the feast. “All is now ready- it’s time to feast! Please come!”
Except the invitees don’t go. Ken Bailey describes it this way: “Imagine you have invited friends over for dinner. And you have spent all day cooking and cleaning. They come, they are sitting in the living room, maybe having a beverage, talking, and you walk out of the kitchen to say ‘dinner is ready! Come to the table”! and they shrug, give some lame excuse, and then walk out the door…”
Not only do the invited guests in the parable not come, they give rude, half-hearted excuses- the text says “they made light of it”- “whatever”- and then they move from rudeness to violence—they seize the king’s slaves and kill them- all for inviting them to dinner!
They made light of it, the text tells us. - the word literally means: “they did not think about, and thus not respond appropriately to” the gift they had been given—an invitation to the bridal feast, given by the King. Feasting in the Kingdom of Heaven—and the guests just shrug their shoulders and say “whatever”. They do not understand the gift they have received, and so don’t bother to attend.
The king is enraged, and after punishing them and their city, sends more slaves out to find more guests. “Go out and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” So they go out, to the far reaches of the kingdom, and gather in all they find, both good and bad. The first guests were unworthy, and now there are guests, both good and bad, so that the wedding hall was filled.
The Gospel according to Matthew is believed to have been written in the context of a faith community that is struggling. They are Jews who have followed Christ—and they are being shunned by their families, kicked out of their synagogues, pushed out of their homes and jobs. They have received this gift—the Good News of God in Jesus Christ—and they can’t understand why their families, their friends, their loved ones, don’t see things the way they do. What would you do if given the greatest gift? Shrug your shoulders? Walk away?
But the Matthean community also struggled—as we do—as to what a life lived in accepting this gift looks like—what behavior are you going to have, haven been given this gift? How will your life be changed? In looking at you, in your behavior, your actions, your speech, how will I know the good news is good?
The first part of this parable makes sense. But it is the last part that I struggle with—a guest, called in from the street, on the spur of the moment, per the king’s orders, and gets yelled at: “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”
What?? This guy was just out on the street, minding his own business, when the slaves come and take him to the banquet hall. Apparently there was no time to go home and wash up and change—if the man even had a fancy wedding robe. And then, to pour salt on the wound, the bouncers are called, the man is handcuffed, taken out, and thrown into the outer darkness.
But to the Matthean community, this is not just about the proper attire. It is about behavior. How are we to behave, in light of the great gift and invitation we have received? “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” Galatians says. “You have put on Christ, in Christ you have been baptized!” we sing at baptisms.
If we are invited to the feast, then we should behave as if at a feast. Behave as grateful people. “Rise to the occasion”.
“What we do matters because who we are matters” David Bartlett says of the Gospel of Matthew. The life we live counts for something. And the WAY we live counts for something. Our own Book of Order calls us to live lives that “are a demonstration of the Christian gospel in the church and in the world.” (BOO G-6.0106) Our good works do not save us—that is the action of Christ. But we respond with thanksgiving—we do not treat lightly the gift we have been given. “If our doing good is not good, and our doing bad not genuinely bad, if there is neither judgment nor condemnation, then grace itself is thin and wasted.” It is not cheap grace, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it. It is not wasted grace. It is costly grace. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and walk away.
When I was in Mexico, I went to the cathedral every morning, as a way to practice some Spanish. And every morning, the poor and the homeless would gather in and around the cathedral. I saw one man there every morning—dirt poor, sleeping on the sidewalks, with a little plastic bag of clothing and belongings carefully tied up beside him. Now, Mass was said in the cathedral every morning. But Sunday, of course, was the most crowded, the best attended. So on Sunday morning, going to Mass, I saw the same homeless man again. That morning, though, he was pulling a garment out of his tattered plastic bag of clothes. It was a white guayabara- the kind of formal shirt Mexican men wear for special occasions. This man, who had so little, was dressing up to go to Mass, to go to the feast. He knew what a gift he was receiving, and he was dressing and acting accordingly.
Now I am not suggesting we go back to the days of shirts and ties, dresses and heels for church attendance. But Christ calls us to live lives of such gratitude that it is visible—just like our clothing. Perhaps Colossians paints a picture of how this garment will look: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other…above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” That is a garment fit for a royal wedding.
32When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”2Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”3So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.4He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”6They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
7The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;8they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!<9The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.10Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”11But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?12Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“14And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
Matthew 22:1-14 p 803
22Once more Jesus spoke to the scribes and the pharisees in parables, saying:2“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.3He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.4Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’5But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,6while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.7The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.8Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.9Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’10Those slaves went out to the borders of the kingdom and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.11“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,12and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And the man was speechless.13Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’14For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Perhaps you have received them: those “save the date” cards, sent months ahead of the actual wedding, so that you can mark your calendar, and make sure you reserve that day for the big wedding. But imagine that you received a save the date card for a royal wedding- perhaps the wedding this past summer of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Imagine your excitement at being invited! Imagine what the reception would be like: the fanciest foods, an open bar, perhaps a champagne fountain and a dessert table- and now imagine, after the food has been bought and carefully prepared, the catering hall reserved, the musicians hired, that you just decided to bag it. Stay home—and not even have a good excuse. “Why didn’t you come? I invited you especially?” the host asks- “oh, no reason really. Just didn’t feel like it”.
The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet—where the guests don’t bother to show up. In Middle Eastern tradition, the event would have been planned, and the guests invited. And as the day drew near, the host, having counted the number of people attending, would slaughter the animals and prepare the festive meal—and look at the menu: oxen and fat calves— think prime rib and lobster, 7 course meals- lavish extravagance! And once the meal was ready, or close to being served, the servants would go house to house and summon the guests to the feast. “All is now ready- it’s time to feast! Please come!”
Except the invitees don’t go. Ken Bailey describes it this way: “Imagine you have invited friends over for dinner. And you have spent all day cooking and cleaning. They come, they are sitting in the living room, maybe having a beverage, talking, and you walk out of the kitchen to say ‘dinner is ready! Come to the table”! and they shrug, give some lame excuse, and then walk out the door…”
Not only do the invited guests in the parable not come, they give rude, half-hearted excuses- the text says “they made light of it”- “whatever”- and then they move from rudeness to violence—they seize the king’s slaves and kill them- all for inviting them to dinner!
They made light of it, the text tells us. - the word literally means: “they did not think about, and thus not respond appropriately to” the gift they had been given—an invitation to the bridal feast, given by the King. Feasting in the Kingdom of Heaven—and the guests just shrug their shoulders and say “whatever”. They do not understand the gift they have received, and so don’t bother to attend.
The king is enraged, and after punishing them and their city, sends more slaves out to find more guests. “Go out and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” So they go out, to the far reaches of the kingdom, and gather in all they find, both good and bad. The first guests were unworthy, and now there are guests, both good and bad, so that the wedding hall was filled.
The Gospel according to Matthew is believed to have been written in the context of a faith community that is struggling. They are Jews who have followed Christ—and they are being shunned by their families, kicked out of their synagogues, pushed out of their homes and jobs. They have received this gift—the Good News of God in Jesus Christ—and they can’t understand why their families, their friends, their loved ones, don’t see things the way they do. What would you do if given the greatest gift? Shrug your shoulders? Walk away?
But the Matthean community also struggled—as we do—as to what a life lived in accepting this gift looks like—what behavior are you going to have, haven been given this gift? How will your life be changed? In looking at you, in your behavior, your actions, your speech, how will I know the good news is good?
The first part of this parable makes sense. But it is the last part that I struggle with—a guest, called in from the street, on the spur of the moment, per the king’s orders, and gets yelled at: “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?”
What?? This guy was just out on the street, minding his own business, when the slaves come and take him to the banquet hall. Apparently there was no time to go home and wash up and change—if the man even had a fancy wedding robe. And then, to pour salt on the wound, the bouncers are called, the man is handcuffed, taken out, and thrown into the outer darkness.
But to the Matthean community, this is not just about the proper attire. It is about behavior. How are we to behave, in light of the great gift and invitation we have received? “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” Galatians says. “You have put on Christ, in Christ you have been baptized!” we sing at baptisms.
If we are invited to the feast, then we should behave as if at a feast. Behave as grateful people. “Rise to the occasion”.
“What we do matters because who we are matters” David Bartlett says of the Gospel of Matthew. The life we live counts for something. And the WAY we live counts for something. Our own Book of Order calls us to live lives that “are a demonstration of the Christian gospel in the church and in the world.” (BOO G-6.0106) Our good works do not save us—that is the action of Christ. But we respond with thanksgiving—we do not treat lightly the gift we have been given. “If our doing good is not good, and our doing bad not genuinely bad, if there is neither judgment nor condemnation, then grace itself is thin and wasted.” It is not cheap grace, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it. It is not wasted grace. It is costly grace. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and walk away.
When I was in Mexico, I went to the cathedral every morning, as a way to practice some Spanish. And every morning, the poor and the homeless would gather in and around the cathedral. I saw one man there every morning—dirt poor, sleeping on the sidewalks, with a little plastic bag of clothing and belongings carefully tied up beside him. Now, Mass was said in the cathedral every morning. But Sunday, of course, was the most crowded, the best attended. So on Sunday morning, going to Mass, I saw the same homeless man again. That morning, though, he was pulling a garment out of his tattered plastic bag of clothes. It was a white guayabara- the kind of formal shirt Mexican men wear for special occasions. This man, who had so little, was dressing up to go to Mass, to go to the feast. He knew what a gift he was receiving, and he was dressing and acting accordingly.
Now I am not suggesting we go back to the days of shirts and ties, dresses and heels for church attendance. But Christ calls us to live lives of such gratitude that it is visible—just like our clothing. Perhaps Colossians paints a picture of how this garment will look: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other…above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” That is a garment fit for a royal wedding.
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